


Recovery Effort

by donniedont



Category: Adam Lambert (Musician), American Idol RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Small Town, Drug Use, M/M, Rehabilitation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-18
Updated: 2012-11-18
Packaged: 2017-11-18 22:53:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/566171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/donniedont/pseuds/donniedont
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adam is marred by scandal when photos of his drug habits are leaked to the press. Refusing to go to rehab after he detoxes, his label sends him to lie low with Kris and Matt, two guys that seem to just be good Samaritans.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Recovery Effort

**Author's Note:**

> This was written as a gift for an LJ user back in 2010. Upon rereading it, I decided that it was still up to snuff and okay to post on AO3! Enjoy!

Adam’s agent is less than appreciative of the photos of him doing coke with some starlet.  
  
She is also not amused when he appeared unapologetic about it when the paparazzi began to ask him about it.  
  
She is _definitely_ not happy when he got into a fight with an ex at a club.  
  
And… you get the picture.  
  
“Could you at least _try_ to get some kind of sympathy?” she demands, throwing an issue of _Star Magazine_ in his face. “We could have fabricated some sob story about the coke… an eating disorder, peer pressure, hell, _your dad molested you when you were a child_ , but no! You had to start being all smug about it and punch that singer-songwriter guy in the mouth at Club Splash!” She stops yelling for a moment, rubbing her temples. “You may be a successful musician, but you’re not above the law. And you’re certainly not God. You’re going to crash and burn like everyone else that’s ever pulled this shit. So stop pretending that you’re invincible.”  
  
Adam just sits there, watching. He’s itching his arm out of nervousness and craving, but he nods. Anything to get her to stop yelling.  
  
“Do you want to be a musician? Because right now, I’m not so sure,” she adds.  
  
Adam pushes his sunglasses up on his nose. “I _want_ to make music. Of course, I do. I also want you to stop yelling at me.”  
  
“So go to rehab! Or detox! Or cold turkey! Or go to some deserted island and try and find yourself, I don’t care! Just get clean. If not for yourself, then for your fans that are so in love with you.”  
  
Adam sighs, because he really can’t fight her there.  
  
*  
  
Dextoxing is pretty awful. He sweats into white sheets until they turn yellow, vomits out what he convinces himself to be the lining of his stomach, and talks to some guy with fancy credentials about his feelings. He hates how he has to talk about his past, like how his parents got divorced while he was away trying to make a name for himself and how he really didn’t like himself in high school.“ _Why_ didn’t you like yourself in high school?” the therapist asked, tapping his finger on legal pad of lined yellow paper. Adam’s lips just pressed together and he looked away). He really hates that there is now a writing tablet flowing around his health record, that will always be there if there is ever a reference needed about his mental health ever again.  
  
*  
  
Adam can’t stand the concept of going to rehab.  
  
“I don’t want to sit around in some resort with a bunch of ‘fellow addicts’ while the world keeps spinning around me,” he reasons, sitting on his bed across from his agent. He’s only just noticed that his constant scratching at his arms has stopped and he’s okay with just balling his body up and not focusing on the ticks that he seemed to develop while on coke. It’s not exactly nice, but it’s definitely different.  
  
His agent sighs and shakes her head. “You’ve been clean for three weeks. People still want you to be disappear for a while. Rehab isn’t just for you, but for the people that you need to win over when this is over.”  
  
“I’ll live in my parent’s basement if I have to, I just don’t want to go to rehab,” Adam begged, “I’m so sick of being mindfucked.”  
  
His agent clenches her jaw and hisses, “We’re going to have to still send you somewhere. Not a facility, but somewhere outside of the major cities until you’re ready to appear again. I’ll come back with a plan.”  
  
*  
  
Arkansas.  
  
His agent decides on Arkansas.  
  
He’s sitting in some airplane with some nondescript outfit on his way to _Arkansas_ and a piece of appear in his hand with a name scribbled on it: _Kris Allen_.  
  
He leans back as he feels the plane begin to descend. He doesn’t know much about the guy that’s decided to take him in until everything blows over. He has to have a lot of patience and is mostly likely one of the few not-homophobes in Arkansas willing to take in an openly gay musician that is trying to hide for awhile until his “alleged coke use” blows over.  
  
The plane lands on the tarmac sometime in the late afternoon. It lands rather roughly, hard enough to make Adam’s feet kick up for a moment until the plane eases to a stop.  
  
He looks outside the window. The sun’s shining on his temporary homeland, but it doesn’t make him optimistic about the near future.  
  
*  
  
Adam doesn’t really think about what Kris will look like until he picks up his luggage and begins to look around the terminal, marginally nervous. For the first time in a long time, he misses his bodyguard, his agent, and the few stylists he was able to keep around at the high point of his career. He turns his head frantically until he feels a hand on his shoulder. He turns around one final time and looks down at a shorter man holding a sign with his initials on it. “Adam Lambert?” he asks carefully, his voice low.  
  
“Uh, yeah,” Adam replies.  
  
“I’m Kris Allen,” he announces, his big brown eyes looking up at him expectantly.  
  
“Oh,” Adam reacts. Because _oh_ , what a cutie.  
  
*  
  
Kris lives in a small house that’s not too far from his parents. He has a roommate named Matt, that’s well aware of the situation. The house has two bedrooms, and another extra room they’ve made into a bedroom for Adam to sleep in. There’s one bathroom, which makes Adam a little concerned about mornings, a decently-sized kitchen, a common room, and a room that’s full of instruments, from a piano to a guitar to weird percussion instruments that Adam’s never seen before.  
  
“Do you guys sing?” Adam asks as he walks around the room. He looks at a beautiful guitar and contemplates running his fingers down it.  
  
“Yeah, Kris is going to…” Matt started.  
  
Kris shoved him and said, “We do open mikes and stuff.”  
  
Adam nodded, picking up some kind of small drum and inspecting it. “I want to hear you play sometime,” he told them.  
  
“Maybe if you’re lucky enough,” Kris said, putting his hand on the drum.  
  
Adam passed it to Kris and asked, “Do you have cable?”  
  
“Yes, Adam. We do.”  
  
*  
  
Kris is a pretty good caretaker. He knows to give Adam enough distance, but still seems to be watching him in some way, he makes Matt watch him. He would much rather be back at LA, where he could at least be in his own home sitting around doing nothing, but he figures that he’ll be home soon enough.  
  
Until he’s home, he figures he will just lay across the couch in the common room, half-watch Gossip Girl, and try to write lyrics.  
  
Kris putters around, eventually leaning against the couch, leaning over to look at Adam’s notebook. “Can I see your lyrics?” Kris asks.  
  
Adam looks at what he’s scribbled in the margins- “Kris has a cute ass”, “I’m so bored”, the opening lines of a Goldfrapp song…  
  
He pulls it close to his chest and looks up at Kris, shaking his head. “Maybe later,” he replies.  
  
*  
  
Once Adam is settled in, he tries to make the best of his situation. He goes for walks, sees if he can find anything at a thrift store that’s a pretty decent find, and flirts with some cute, nerdy guy at Blockbuster. He calls his parents to tell them that he’s okay, Kris and Matt aren’t ax murderers, and that Arkansas is better than rehab, but he was homesick within two days.  
  
“Did someone else get their drug use leaked to the public?” Adam whines as he calls his agent, “Can I go home yet?”  
  
His agent sighs and says, “Just stay for a month. That’s all the label wants of you. Write lyrics. Make an album and call it something like The Arkansas Sessions.”  
  
“That’s awful and you know it,” he tells her.  
  
*  
  
Every night, Adam takes up the entire couch and finds himself doing something solitary. On this day, he’s rereading The Mysteries of Pittsburgh for the umpteenth time. He knows that in terms of conversation, he hasn’t made all that much with Kris or Matt aside from, “Can we go to some place that’s interesting?” He knows that he’s a burden, and if he could, he would have never been there in the first place, but he still feels somewhat obligated to at least get to know his keepers.  
  
He puts his book down for a moment and grabs his phone from off the coffee table. He hits a side button and realizes that it’s been a solid week and a half and no one has decided to even send him a courtesy text.  
  
He watches the screen shut off on his phone again and he pokes the screen again, even seeing if he forgot to turn his phone on vibrate. When the screen fades to black again he cradles the phone in his hands, allowing his lips to form a frown.  
  
For some reason, the realization that no one will pause the world for him hurts more than detox ever did.  
*  
  
When Kris asks Matt and Adam if he can bring someone back to the house, Adam just shrugs. He assumes he’s going to bring back some pretty little blonde girl with a cute sun dress and a sweet smile.  
  
Matt goes to bed early, leaving Adam up and very shocked when he makes his way into the kitchen for a water bottle and sees a very toned, very tall, brunet guy kissing Kris as Kris attempted to sit on the kitchen counter.  
  
Adam just stands by the fridge, oddly turned on and somewhat shocked. “Oh, I didn’t see that coming,” Adam murmurs.  
  
Kris peeks over the guy’s shoulder and smirks.  
  
Adam quickly grabs a water bottle out of the fridge and waves as he jogs to his room.  
  
*  
  
Adam says goodbye to Matt as he leaves the next morning for work. He makes himself some cereal and sits at the kitchen table, staring at his food as Kris comes downstairs.  
  
“So did the guy you so rudely forgot to introduce leave?” Adam asks, not intending to sound as cold as it came out.  
  
Kris takes a deep breath and sits across from Adam. “We should probably talk, shouldn’t we?”  
  
“Yeah, seeing as though you’ve been taking care of me,” Adam noted, “I mean, I’m pretty easy to find out about in a Google search, but you… I don’t know,”  
  
“Uh, well, I’m twenty-two. I’m almost done with a degree in business. I like my guitar, college football, and tall guys. That’s all I can really think about right now.”  
  
“All right,” Adam replies, “I’m good with that.” He looked down at the cross hanging from Kris’s chest. “Aren’t you big on Jesus, though?”  
  
“You _can_ be religious and still like men, you know.”  
  
“But how does your G-O-D feel about random, same-sex hook ups?”  
  
“I think He can understand a man’s needs.”  
  
*  
  
Adam decides that he likes Kris _a lot_ one day after he comes back from Block Buster with Matt. The Block Buster Boy wasn’t working that day, which was oddly depressing, but seeing Kris strumming his guitar and swimming in sheet music made up for it.  
  
“The hell are you playing now, Allen?” Matt asked, flopping on the couch next to Kris.  
  
Adam sits on the chair next to the sofa and watches Kris tell Matt about some original song he wrote a little while back. He wants to focus on Kris’s explanation, but he’s too hung up on how Kris is kind of a perfect catch. He’s visually gorgeous and just the right combination of sweet and risky. He likes that he sometimes has the girl he tried to date in high school over and how he makes meals for all three of the guys in the house, each one labeled personally, and makes sure to make a list of places for Adam to check out when he’s particularly bored.  
  
As Kris quietly plays his way through a Killers song, Adam sits there quietly, watching Kris sing about waiting on some beautiful boy.  
  
Matt eventually rolls his eyes and says, “Yeah, okay, I’ve heard these songs more than enough. I’m going to my room. Night, guys,” he tells them and disappears.  
  
Adam leans on his arms and looks up at Kris. “Is it unethical to tell you that you’re extremely attractive?” he asks.  
  
Kris smirks. “I don’t think so. You’re pretty attractive yourself.”  
  
Adam instinctually hides his face in his arms. He pokes his head out again and says, “We should act upon this mutual attraction. Just saying.”  
  
“Maybe for your two month anniversary of sobriety,” Kris replies.  
  
*  
  
They don’t make it for his second month.  
  
It’s probably Adam’s one month and three weeks of being clean and he’s watching some late, late night talk show as Kris appears next to him, a little tipsy. He sits on the arm of the couch near Adam’s head, petting his hair. “Hi, Adam,” he says, grinning.  
  
Adam looks up, Kris’s hand still caught in his hair. “You never put bars on the lists of stuff for me to do,” Adam murmurs, hearing the sleep in his own voice.  
  
“Because you’re a recovering addict,” Kris says bluntly.  
  
“ _Please_. I could call someone to hand deliver me better shit than whatever this Podunk town can provide.”  
  
“That’s bullshit. Your phone’s been silent aside from your immediate family and your power tripping agent.”  
Adam shot up. “You were looking at my phone?!”  
  
“Not really. I’ve just kind of been able to figure out that you’re really only talking to your parents and your brother and your agent. And I may have gone through your texts once or twice… you haven’t really talked to me too much, so I had to make sure that you were okay. But it seems like no one’s been really talking to you, have they?”  
  
  
“That’s bullshit,” Adam replies, “They’re just separating themselves from me for a little while, because I had to detox and do whatever the fuck this is.”  
  
“No, no, _no_. I highly doubt that _every_ one of your friends is on the party scene and has to separate themselves from you. I feel really bad for you if they are all coke addicts. I mean, I hope not, but if they are… that _sucks_.” He takes his hand out of Adam’s hair and puts it on the arm of the couch. “You’re a really lonely guy, aren’t you?”  
  
Adam is silent for a moment or two and eventually wills himself to say, “No, I mean… not all my friends are drug addicts, if that’s what you’re getting at. I mean, I had a lot of friends I knew before I got famous… but they’re all gone now.”  
  
“Why are they gone?” Kris asks.  
  
Adam stands up. He takes Kris’s hands in his own and helps Kris off of the couch. Kris leans in toward him and says, “You can tell me, you know. I have a minor in psychology.”  
  
“Thank God for that,” Adam says, rolling his eyes. “If you must know, I totally shot myself in the foot. I stopped talking to them so I could hang out with my friends with overpriced clothes and fake implants and lots and lots of drugs. They probably wouldn’t want to put up with my bullshit in my ‘hour of need.’”  
  
“I would! You don’t really talk to me all that much, but you seem pretty cool.”  
  
Adam laughs. “I’m glad you think so.”  
  
Kris picks up the remote control and turns off the TV. “So you’ve been good? You don’t want to relapse?” he asks.  
  
“Dude, detox was _hell_. I never want to do that again,” Adam confesses, “That and, well. I guess I _did_ forget about the music…”  
  
“Mm hm,” Kris says, beginning to lean in toward Adam’s neck. Adam listened to Kris breathe softly against his skin.  
  
Adam snorts. “Are you even listening to me?” he asked.  
  
“Yeah,” Kris replies, “But I also want to kiss you. You look really sad and I don’t like it. So I’m, like, super torn right now. But I’m going to go with coke is bad, and you are clean, but your friends are gone, and I’m going to try and make you feel better as best as I can.”  
  
“You’re so subtle, aren’t you?” Adam asks, “Isn’t this violating your rules?”  
  
“The shots of jager I took are saying that I should fuck what the rules say and try to get laid tonight.”  
  
Adam smirks as he pulls Kris away from his neck and faces him. “I think I have to agree with the jager.”  
  
*  
  
Adam wakes up the next morning in Kris’s bed. He sits up, watching Kris cling to his pillow while he is lost in sleep. Adam brought his knees up and continued to watch Kris sleep. It definitely isn’t the first time that he impulsively hooked up with a guy, but it’s certainly the first time in a long time he ever did it sober. He isn’t really sure if this is what the people at the detox center had in mind for him as an outpatient, but after a few weeks of watching TV, walking around Arkansas, and writing lyrics, he hopes that he can get a pass, Just this once. Possibly more if Kris comes back drunk again.  
  
Kris finally wakes up a half an hour later. Only then does Adam realize that he’s been watching him that long. He gets up and stretches, rubbing his eyes like a child.  
  
“You remember last night?” Adam blurts out, nearly regretting it.  
  
“You’re…”  
  
“Awesome? I know, I know. Not gonna lie, I was really obnoxious getting clean, but that was so much better clean. Actually, not tweaking in general is kind of nice.”  
  
Kris smirks. “I don’t really think having sex with the guy that decided to take you in while you’re under a media shitstorm is supposed to give you that kind of mental clarity.”  
  
Adam grins. “I hope Matt didn’t hear.”  
  
Kris sits up and shakes his head. “We can’t do this again, you know.”  
  
Adam’s grin flattens. “Why not?”  
  
“Because this could screw up my career. I’m taking care of you and making sure you’re not getting in trouble. If we did this more often… you know.”  
  
“What career? You’re a college student,” Adam points out.  
  
Kris looked around the room nervously. “Oh. About that…”  
  
Adam sighed. “Jesus Christ, Allen, what are you hiding?”  
  
Kris sighed, bringing his hand to his hair and pulling on it nervously. “I know the whole taking you in thing is probably weird, right? Well, there’s a reason why.”  
  
“Which is?...”  
  
“I’m taking you in because your record company promised me that if I can make sure you end up all right, I’ll get a record deal.” He looked down at his lap. “I’m not really sure if I was supposed to reveal that. But, I mean, you were going to find out anyway, you know? But… yeah. That’s what’s been going on, behind the scenes, I guess.”  
  
Adam slowly got out of bed, searching for the pair of pants that ended up draped on a hamper. As he squirms into them he says, “I should have probably known you were going to get some kind of compensation for this,” he admits.  
  
“You can be angry, you know,” Kris says, “I just… I feel bad.”  
  
“No, I’m glad you told me the truth,” Adam says, searching for his shirt. He wraps it around his arms nervously and said, “You know what? I think today’s another ‘flirting with a guy in Blockbuster’ day.” He unravels his t-shirt and slipped it on. “I’m going to go, okay? I’m sure Matt will be suspicious if we leave at the same time.”  
  
Kris nodded. “Yeah, you’re right,” he replies. He loops the material of his sheets in-between his fingers.  
  
“I’m going to go,” Adam sais, opening the door and slowly closing it behind him.  
  
*  
  
Adam sits on the porch for a long time, dangling his feet back and forth. He admits to himself that he feels used, which is weird to him. He’s done coke with starlets that threatened to blackmail him, had photos taken of himself and allowed them to be sold to magazines for thousands of dollars, and yet it took a sober (at least on his hand) hookup with a guy that’s taking him in for some kind of benefit. He kicks the wood with his heels furiously as the door slides open and Matt appears.  
  
“Hey, you okay?” Matt asks.  
  
Adam turns around and smiles nervously. “Nah, not really. I’ll be okay.”  
  
Matt sits down next to Adam. “I heard you and Kris last night.”  
  
“Oh, God, Matt, I’m so sorry…”  
  
“It’s whatever, dude. I think it was kind of unethical, but whatever. I’m not going to tell.”  
  
“Thank you so much,” Adam said.  
  
“You sound sad. You’re also being way too nice right now. What happened?”  
  
“I found out that Kris is being given a record contract if he puts up with me?”  
  
“Oh _yeah_. That.” Matt winces. “For what it’s worth, you’ve grown on him. He likes you a lot. I don’t really know what you were like before you got clean, but we both like you now.”  
  
“Really?” Adam asks.  
  
“Yep. I think you’ll be fine.” He pats Adam’s shoulder and leaves.  
  
Adam nearly cries. It’s the first time in a long time he’s been told he was doing something right.  
  
*  
  
Adam didn’t see Kris until mid-afternoon. When they do, they make awkward eye contact and Kris says, “When this is over with, and I’m not back from a night at the bar, and you’re not angry at me anymore, I want to redo that whole thing. And maybe be in an established relationship first.”  
  
Adam laughs. “I think I do, too,” he admits.  
  
*  
  
Adam’s agent calls him a week later.  
  
“So the label says you have to come back to LA. It’s time for you to make up your best sob story and make the public believe you actually feel bad for what you did,” she said.  
  
“I kind of still don’t feel bad, though,” Adam says, curled up on the couch next to Kris.  
  
“…Please, Adam, we are not playing this game again,” she mumbled.  
  
“No, I mean, I don’t really feel like what I did was horrible. It’s just that I was kind of messed up and sad and used and all that,” Adam explains.  
  
“This sounds like the makings of a good press release. You have your Twitter permission again,” she said. “Told you Arkansas would treat you well.”  
  
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. You were right, I was wrong. Just get me home as soon as you can,” he told her.  
  
Kris looks at Adam and smirks. “So you’re going home?”  
  
“Yeah. I’m going home.”  
  
*  
  
Saying goodbye is hard. Matt, Kris, and Adam spend the night before he leaves actually talking about their lives. Matt mentions how all he’s ever wanted to do is play piano. When Adam asks if he’s going to get a contract after this, he just smirks and says, “You’ll know if and when it happens.” Kris just says that he has always known that he likes guys, he’s just afraid to finally tell his parents. Adam knows he’s heard himself say it before. He pats Kris’s thigh and says that he expects both of them visiting him and putting up with the fact that he can’t really drink anymore when they go onto the club scene. Kris then points out that someone has to take him to the bathroom so he doesn’t end up with cocaine in his nose. Adam just sighs, because while Arkansas is oddly liberating and hasn’t gotten him in the mood to relapse, LA is a different world that may make him almost fall into the trap again.  
  
Kris and Adam didn’t hook up since that one time. They hugged and kissed a few times, but in terms of a relationship, it was all in limbo until LA. And even then, Adam wasn’t sure if he wanted Kris to subject himself to being the one with the unstable, recently rehabbed boy. At the same time, he couldn’t deny that every time they were close, he felt a little more electric. A little less used up.  
  
“You should really just come back with me,” Adam suggests as the cab pulls up in front of the house.  
  
Kris looks up from picking up Adam’s bag and laughs. “I’ll be there in a few months. By then you’ll have everything figured out and it’ll all be okay.”  
  
  
“I know, but…”Adam starts, “…What if, you know. I fuck up?”  
  
Kris stops lifting Adam’s luggage and holds his hands. “You’ll be _fine_. Give it some time. I think you’re going to be able to pull this off.”  
  
Adam leans in hoping to get one more kiss until Matt skids a pair of boots at his ankles. “You forgot something in your room!” he yells.  
  
“No cock-blocking roommates in LA, either,” Adam brings up.  
  
“Shut up,” Kris says, laughing.  
  
*  
  
“…And I got some good food for you in the fridge…” his mom notes as she opens up the fridge to prove a point.  
  
Adam notices the amount of food crammed into it. “That’s impressive,” he notes.  
  
“I’m just so happy you’re back,” she whispers. “ _Healthy_ , no less. Are you sure you want to be alone tonight?”  
  
“I think I’m ready,” Adam replies. He feels his phone vibrate, but he doesn’t look at it until he is able to get his mom out of the apartment. He checks his phone and reads the message.  
  
It’s from Kris.  
  
 _yea so i kind of miss you already. if i get on a plan asap will you pick me up?_  
  
Adam smiles for the first time in what feels like ages.


End file.
